Re: BASIC
Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code
1) A cut down version of ForTran implemented by Dartmouth College. Gates and a friend ported the Dartmouth BASIC to 8080 and CP/M, stage one of launching their company. Later it was ported by them to the 6502 (I think inc. Apple & Pet?)
2) Then they bought a reverse engineered version of CP/M-86 and sold that to IBM as PC-DOS.
3) Windows on DOS was partly copied from Xerox Star (as was Lisa/Mac/Apple GS desktops) and partly out of IBM/MS OS/2 collaboration Display Manager.
4) NT starts at 3.1 (1993) presumably because partly based on the MS version of OS/2 (1989) that included LAN Manager for Win3.x computer clients.
5) Added Explorer Desktop and all 32 bit drivers etc to Win 3.11/Win32s to create win95. True OS had to be updated for free from NT 3.5 to NT 3.51 to allow Office 95 to run as had deliberately invented extra APIs to stop Office 95 on Win3.x. NT 4.0 got the Explorer Shell, only a preview to MSDN folk on NT3.51. NT4.0 got 64 bits for Alpha
6) Disastrously ME based on Win9x and released too Quickly NT5.0 (Win2000). Fixed by NT5.1 (XP). Vista was botched, too much eyeCandy, The 1st 64 bit XP was for Itanium and and short lived. 2003-2004 was the start of MS decline, with many stupid decisions. Win7 should have been free to Vista users, it's only a Vista SP. NT security crippled by badly written Win9x applications needing user to be Admin.
7) By now Office has evil Ribbon, VB6 is dead some years earlier and now they try to make desktop like a Phone with Windows 8.
8) Final stage. Local office depreciated in favour of Cloud 365, Win10 entry version least customisable since win2.0 and up to 30% less productivity than XP. Comes with spyware, adverts, excessive monochrome & flat and applications you can't remove. TWO different program menus and multiple control panels. Entry level version needs command line to create local users.